Vehicle license plate frames and holders have existed in the automotive aftermarket for about as long as there have been vehicle license plates. More recently, the bumpers on vehicles, such as automobiles, sport utility vehicles, vans, minivans and light trucks, have become more notional and more susceptible to damage from even slight impacts. Vehicle bumpers used to be prominent structures fashioned of chrome-plated steel and offered some modicum of protection from low-velocity impacts, but now more typically are integrated with the vehicle body, are made of flexible plastic and are painted. A relatively low-velocity impact sustained by a conventional “bumper” may cause damage such as dimples, cracks or scratching that can only be remedied by an expensive visit to an auto body shop. In many instances, this damage is caused by the license plate, license plate frame and/or license plate mounting screws carried by the bumper of the impacting vehicle.
To address this problem, license plate frames and holders have been proposed that combine structure for holding and/or protecting a license plate with an elastomeric bumper element. These products take advantage of the fact that no matter how notional a vehicle “bumper” is, or how continuous it has been designed to be with the rest of the vehicle body, some provision must be made to affix a vehicle license plate to it, if only a pair of mounting screw holes—and these attaching means can therefore be used to affix a further protective element to the vehicle. Prior art combinations of license plate frames and bumper elements tend to be either fashioned of a single rubber material, or constituted by a license plate frame onto which has been glued one or more separately cured rubber elements. These prior art attempts may suffer from problems such as delamination and tearing or other physical failure, as it is difficult to find a single material that combines sufficient structural strength and sufficient elasticity when subjected to an impact.